Top 10 streaming movies of 2025: 'Train Dreams,' 'Highest 2 Lowest,' more

The best way to watch a movie remains the traditional one: in a theater, surrounded by an audience of strangers, sharing a communal experience.

Of course, the streaming age has changed that staple forever. 

And with Netflix on the verge of buying Warner Bros., the line between a "streaming" movie release and a theatrical one threatens to become blurrier still.

All that being said, there's a lot of strong work premiering on Netflix and its counterparts these days. These are the 10 best movies we saw this year that either premiered directly on a streamer, or had a token theatrical release before making their at-home debuts.

1. "Train Dreams" (Netflix)

A stunning movie, a symphony of visual wonders and profound reflections that finds something deep and true in the story of an early 20th century logger trying to make a better life for himself and his family.

2. "Highest 2 Lowest" (Apple TV)

Denzel Washington and Spike Lee team up for the first time in nearly two decades with a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low" that feels every bit as urgent and powerfully of the moment as Lee's best work.

3. "The Perfect Neighbor" (Netflix)

A harrowing documentary depiction of a violent crime on an ordinary street in Florida, captured with police body-camera footage.

4. "John Candy: I Like Me" (Prime Video)

The late comedy icon gets the biographical documentary treatment he deserves, offering us all the gift of bringing him back to life, if only for a moment.

5. "Jay Kelly" (Netflix)

See it for Adam Sandler's terrific performance as the harried manager of George Clooney's titular movie star. It's a whole new side of the Sandman, a criminally underrated dramatic actor.

6. "Who Killed the Montreal Expos?" (Netflix)

The collapse of the Montreal Expos, the MLB team that moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Nationals after the 2004 season, is treated as a murder mystery in this enormously entertaining documentary.

7. "Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost" (Apple TV)

Ben Stiller pays tribute to the late Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in a movie that strips away the artifice of celebrity and becomes, simply, the story of a son remembering his parents and trying to convey the magnitude of their loss.

8. "Mountainhead" (HBO Max)

This is one strange movie from "Succession" creator Jesse Armstrong, starring Steve Carell, about four billionaire friends gathering at a lush mountaintop retreat as society falls apart. But it stays with you.

9. "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery" (Netflix)

The third "Knives Out" movie goes in a quieter and more introspective direction, a path helped enormously by Josh O'Connor's terrific performance as a priest trying to better himself and the world.

10. "Deep Cover" (Prime Video)

The story of improv actors (Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and "Ted Lasso's" Nick Mohammed) recruited to infiltrate the British underworld makes for one of the most unexpectedly funny movies of the year.